"At Budokan"
©1978, 1979 CBS / Epic Records
Produced by CT
Mixed by Jay Messina
Mixing Supervision: Jack Douglas

Hello There
Come On, Come On
Lookout
Big Eyes
Need Your Love
Ain't That A Shame
I Want You To Want Me
Surrender
Goodnight
Clock Strikes Ten

By 1979, Cheap Trick was overdue. Now and then the Rockford, Illinois quartet had glimpsed the vaulted expanse of larger venues, opening for marquee acts like Kiss, The Kinks, Santana and Boston, but most of Cheap Trick's formative years were spent slugging it out in the cramped bars and clubs of America, particularly those throughout the Midwest. Their first three albums for Epic Records - Cheap Trick, In Color and Heaven Tonight - all scored favorable notices from the critics, but none sold sensationally well or produced a bona fide hit single. The band members, their manager, their producer, their record label -everyone was counting on Cheap Trick's fourth release to be the one to finally break them big in America. Sure enough, it did break them big in America, and in the rest of the world to boot. Only it wasn't the album everyone expected, and it didn't happen the way anyone planned.

Cheap Trick At Budokon wasn't supposed to be any big deal. Recorded over the course of two nights at Tokyo's Budokan Hall, during the band's inaugural visit to Japan in late April 1978, the concert album was intended exclusively for the Japanese market, a token of appreciation for a fan base whose sight-unseen support of Cheap Trick - two gold albums, a clutch of hit singles and several spreads in the country's leading music mags - was unmatched anywhere in the world. It was impossible to imagine that something as seemingly off-the-cuff and territorially targeted as Budokan would remain on Billboard's Pop albums chart for over a year (peaking at #4 in the spring of 1979) or go on to sell four million-plus copies in the United States alone.

BACK | MAIN | NEXT